


The Protector

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, worst timeline? maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 10:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11598633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: You catch her before she begins the process of erasing your memories, she explains her plan to you, and honestly, it makes more sense than anything has in a while.An AU in which Magnus walks in on Lucretia a few minutes early.





	1. Chapter 1

In this version of reality, you walk into her quarters earlier. You catch her before she begins the process of erasing your memories. You don't stop her, either. She explains her plan to you, you hear her out, and honestly, it makes more sense than anything has in a while. 

But you don't want her to be alone. You get a cup, and you drink from Fischer’s tank. It tastes awful, but you stay lucid and upright as she drops book after book into the tank, as Fischer devours everyone else's memories. This time, you're there to help her gather the others: just Taako, Davenport, and Merle; Barry is still gone, plummeted over the side with a blast to the chest. You’ll worry about Barry later, just as you’ll spend time — not enough time — searching for Lup.

It's your idea to send Davenport with Merle: the dwarf does better when he has something to take care of, and Davenport seems less agitated in Merle's presence. She takes both of them to the beach. It'll be more difficult for a dwarf with a ward to integrate himself, but Merle will be kinder, steadier. 

And it's your job to vet the person Taako takes with him on the road, while she goes on the relatively simple task of retrieving her staff. You see something in Sazed’s face that she would've missed: instead you find a dark elf woman, someone who in that other story would've been just a fan. You think maybe he needs a woman's touch to keep his bad impulses at bay.

There's no Ravens Roost for you, no Hammer and Tongs, no Julia, and if there's a lot of reasons why you're a harder man in this story, that might be the biggest one.

On the other hand, when she wakes up every morning for a week nauseous, and you were already pretty sure she was late, there's no need, in your mind, to give the boy to old man McDonald. You'll lose time hunting relics in caring for an infant, but you both agree it's worth it. 

If her relic was simple to retrieve, so is yours. Despite all your doubts and fears, it's stayed in Refuge this whole time. And Jack is still alive, he still has the time cup, strangely unused. You take it back before Isaac's coveting gets the better of him, before the bubble cuts off the mama worm from her babies, before June becomes the old woman. It begs you to use it, shows you a woman who made you better, a city that needed a hero, a man who was like a father; you see these things and they seem small, you don't know why the time cup thinks they're important. 

You won't be the emissary of Istus now, and that too has consequences, but time being what it is, you can't see them. 

While you're on that errand, she is negotiating with Maureen Miller to build you a floating moon. You think it's sort of funny, really, the idea of creating a secret organization with its headquarters on a moon. She's prone to being more dramatic than the circumstances call for, you think. 

Especially since you have an invitation in hand to Wonderland. Whatever it is, it looks like they have Barry's bell. You might as well go retrieve it while she's busy with this moon base scheme and the baby on the way. 

You take the penalties, including 20 years gone, and you're the one to leave behind what was once the wizard Cam. It's another thing that closes you off. You chose not to protect someone who trusted you. You chose to escape, you chose her plan instead the life in front of you. 

When you return, she touches your changed face in stunned silence, her fingers tracing lines that ought to have been there decades ago. You never tell her what else you gave up, only that you couldn't get the bell on your own. You have nightmares; you've had nightmares for years, but these are new. Not simply because of the horror show that is Wonderland, but because of the boy. 

She had the baby while you were gone, and you didn't mean for that to happen either. Maureen gives you ugly looks, but neither of them say a word about it. You've taken on her dedication to the plan, and maybe there's some part of her that is grateful, the part of her that told you what she was doing. But she cries, when she thinks you aren't looking. 

You get through it, somehow, without ever talking about what's happened. And by making the world forget, you've given yourselves a little space for this kid, who gets bigger and smarter more quickly than you could have imagined. You spend more time chasing him across the moon, making sure he doesn't fall, while she looks for people to join you. They start calling you The Protector, as she is The Director, almost entirely because of your dedication to the boy. Angus, your son, the source of your happiness and nightmares both. For the first time in a long time, there's something more than the plan. Now you almost cannot abandon this world, the world that contains him in it.

You wake from nightmares of putting him on the wheel, of the Hunger reaching a tendril to consume him, of forgetting him, of a city where you've never been and it's on fire, and something you should have loved dies there. You wake, sweating and trembling, and you go to find him. Asleep, his face in perfect rest. Sitting on his mother's lap, listening to her read. In Fischer’s chamber, his face rapt as Johann plays them a tune. Let the world forget a little while longer and give you a moment for this. But the relics are noisy, and they want to be wanted, and the world won't wait. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, time for some relic-hunting! Figuring out timelines is hard, y'all.

The boy loves riding on trains, and so you take him planetside probably more often than you should. He dresses to the nines, always, the fanciest boy you've ever seen; you don't really know where he gets that from. He sits with excellent posture, watching everything with enormous serious eyes.

You're on your way to Rockport to meet one of her connections, a man named Kessler. News of the oculus, she thinks, although it might be nothing. So far her network of spies has yet to turn up anything. If nothing else, you'll have time for a little Candlenights shopping, for walking in the snow on a wintry day.

You see a familiar elf at the far end of the car, drinking, and looking as though he's been drunk for some time. Angus sees you stare, but he doesn't say anything. When the attendant in a shimmering bowtie comes through, you ask as if you don't know, and the haughty elf is quick to tell you that it's a washed up celebrity, some sort of former cooking star? But he's very rude, sir, I wouldn't approach him.

You're still wondering what had happened to Taako when Angus says he thinks there's something wrong with the attendant. “Some people just aren't very nice,” you tell him. The Rockport Slayer is never caught, but you do find the oculus — in this her spy was correct — and you bring it home to her. She adds its energy to her staff.

The scouts come in a blaze of glory on Candlenights, you see it and you know the days are numbered.

Then Maureen takes sick, and from the evasive way her boy Lucas talks about it, you know something is very wrong. She would never think to be suspicious of Maureen, it's an odd little blind spot, but you harbor no such illusions. It's simple enough to confront that poor nervous young man, after Wonderland you look intimidatingly grizzled, and he confesses. Maureen has the Philosopher’s Stone. Maureen has been using the Philosopher’s Stone. She wants to show you her very important work with the Cosmoscope, but you already know more than you want to know about planes of existence. There's not much she can teach you that you haven't already seen.

There's a struggle, getting the stone away from her, and in that struggle she covers herself in crystal, flings herself off the side of her lab. You retrieve the stone, but now Maureen is a tiny glittering satellite, doomed to circle the planet. Lucas blames you, as if they hadn't known all along that these things were dangerous. You send him to the surface and seal off the empty lab. And since no souls of the dead are ever drawn to inhabit robot bodies, there is no reaper on Lucas's trail, no reaper to open his book in surprise at your strange death count. Which of course you haven't forgotten; you could describe each death in horrifying detail.

She cries, briefly, when you bring her the news of Maureen’s death. She won't let you comfort her. She's not crying when she adds the stone’s power to her staff.

You've started to think it was a mistake to bring other people into the plan, because after Maureen, you have to hunt down the orc woman. Another one of her people turned by the force of the relics, this time the temptations of the sash. Killian has a small forest around her when you arrive with Boyland and Carey to take her down, trees all bent to her will. The winds are like a hurricane, and you find yourself wishing for someone with some magic to do something. On the other hand, if you've learned anything, it's a healthy distrust of magic. An axe or a crossbow is as good as a spell, most days.

It's lucky, the dragonborn got off a lucky shot, knocked her clean out, and you're pleasantly surprised to learn that the orc will recover. And more than that, there's a romance blooming in the recovery room. It touches a well of feeling that not many can reach.

The boy Angus is one of those few, of course, and so is Fischer. You are the one person who enters the voidfish tank, you are its protector as well, even if Johann is still its keeper and feeder. And to her silent but visible dismay, as the boy gets a little bigger, you take him to swim as well. Fischer adores him, perhaps because you do, perhaps because he shares your enthusiasm.

So it is that you are both present when the egg appears and the baby is born. Angus gives it a name.

Not long after this, you hear of a glassing, the first in years, the first since Lup vanished. A town named Phandolin, because this much is the same: a dwarf named Rockseeker hired three adventurers to help him find a treasure vault, and what he found there was more than he could handle.

When you get to the surface, you haul them out of a well. First Barry, alive again somehow, then Taako, who cast the Feather Fall that saved their lives, and finally, not an adventurer, but Davenport. The one that Merle always kept with him, the one Merle pushed ahead to make sure he'd be safe. Merle was too slow, says Taako with irritation instead of sorrow, a newly acquired umbrella sticking awkwardly out of his pack. For a moment you regret everything about this world. But there isn't time for that. You retrieve the gauntlet. You summon a glass ball. And you leave them on the surface.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did I make Wonderland worse than canon? I don't even know. Alas, it doesn't end with anything as beautiful as Arms Outstretched, that's for sure.

When you tell her you've seen them, and that Merle is dead, she goes into isolation as she used to do, as she did right before making everyone forget. But you recognize the signs, you know what she's thinking almost before she does. You draw her out with the boy, it's not exactly using him when after all she does love him, she needs a reminder what you're doing this for. You find her with him, staring intently at the voidfishes swimming together. 

There's only one more left, she says, gripping her staff with a new intensity. She can't lose more of you to Wonderland. She thinks it would go better if you had Barry and Taako; she thinks she could do something with the baby voidfish to allow them to know enough but not everything. 

Too complicated, is how you see it. You can stick to the plan without bringing them into it. You can hire them, like Gundren did. Finally, she lets go of the idea and instead insists on coming with you, on joining you for training, and you'd forgotten how tough and fierce she can be, how willing she is to push herself, maybe a little too far. But she's beautiful, and you haven't let yourself think about that in a long time. 

You train everyone, anyone who is willing to go, you warn them: Wonderland will be worse than anything they've ever experienced. You run them through every scenario you can think of until you are all a well-oiled machine. 

The boy watches as he watches most things, intently. Leaving him in the orc woman’s care suddenly feels like the hardest thing you have ever done in your life. Before the cannons launch, you tell him that you love him, and it’s the last thing you’ll ever say to him.

The elf and the man are in the Felicity Wilds, waiting for you, and they ask to join you. Barry is insistent, even if he can’t explain why. You hesitate to ask what happened to Davenport after Phandolin. You hope they sent him to Merle's family, but you don't want to know for sure.  You and she have a long conversation in low rushed voices; when it carries, as your voice tends to, all that Barry and Taako will hear is static, even now. The rest of the team will follow your leads, as long as you two are united. You bring them, perhaps against your own best instincts, perhaps following some instinct of another time.

There is no preparation good enough for Wonderland. But you are able to keep some discipline among the team through the trials at first. They work together, you work together, and you’re so proud of them. You’re so proud of her, keeping her composure as she loses a decade in an instant. She laughs, even, says that at least now you look closer to the same age. She leans on the staff more heavily, though, and your heart lurches in your chest.

When it goes wrong, it goes wrong in so many ways all at once. There’s so much suffering, and death, you hadn’t expected death, the liches were always so careful to keep everyone at the edge, keep the suffering going. But Taako, his magic skills are so stunted, that what’s you did to him, both of you, and he falls. You cry out, you reach for him, with some muscle memory that you’d locked away years ago, but there’s nothing for it.

Except Barry — Barry stares at Taako’s fallen form, blinking hard, not sad but startled; he mumbles something about advice from a coin, and he reaches for the umbrastaff, still untouched strapped to Taako’s pack. He breaks it, and then things reach a level of chaos you could never have imagined. Of course Lup, Lup is terrifying, resplendent, phantasmal. She stares at you with glowing embers where her eyes once were, and you fear her vengeance, but instead she bursts apart everything in rolling fire, tears Wonderland to the ground with a fury that leaves you shaken, leaves nothing standing but the former inmates. The liches are gone, the bell lies on the ground, silent, unrung.

For a moment, there’s a race between red and white, Lup in her lich form and her, she’s grasped it in one hand, the staff in her other, and her face is resolute. It’s glorious and terrifying, and her brilliant bubble expands as she merges in the power of the Animus Bell, it expands farther and farther until you all stand within it. The staff is in her hand and her knuckles are gripped tight, too tight, you can’t look away from her as the horror of it strikes you full in the chest at the same time that everything turns grey all around you, the world is smoke and ash and you can’t breathe. The last things you see: Barry on his knees, gripping his head with his hands; Lup screaming, weeping tears of living fire; Taako’s crumpled body, and finally her, Lucretia, her eyes wide, her face frozen.


	4. Epilogue

In another plane of existence, a luminous being looks up from her knitting. As the bubble approaches, she looks down at the shimmering threads splayed across her lap. She shakes her head, sadly, ruefully, touching an errant red strand. She takes out her scissors: a snip, and another, and with fingers more light than flesh, she moves the thread every so slightly before returning to her work.

“I think that will do,” she says to no one in particular.

She smiles, and closes her eyes, and when she opens them —

 

You’ve nicked your finger with the knife, a tiny careless gesture, and you’re not entirely sure how. The duck was finished, ready to bring to her as a gift because you’re not always good with words and you want to cheer her up. You’re not sure why she needs cheering, but she does. But you had to adjust one little thing, and now you’re bandaging your finger instead of bringing her gift.

When you open the door, she has tears in her eyes, and behind her you see one of her journals, being consumed by Fischer. Everything is blurring, fading, dissolving into static.

“No, no. What are you doing? Who are you?”

“You weren’t supposed to see this. I’m so sorry.”

The last things you see: the tank glittering with light; a book, dissolving into nothingness, and finally her, Lucretia, her face streaked with tears, reaching out to you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to credit Miss_Bubblegum for giving this story a glimmer of a happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> You know who you are: THANKS FOR GETTING THIS STUCK IN MY HEAD.


End file.
